Thursday, July 31, 2008

In the news story below, another woman lied that she was raped. Fortunately she didn't pin the charge on any specific male before her lie was outed.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Louis Nagy is to be commended for recognizing the ultimate victim of false rape claims -- innocent men: "Luckily she didn't name any names," said Nagy. "The stigma [of being falsely accused of rape] can be insurmountable to recover from."

Imagine if women routinely claimed they were raped by a "black man" or a "Jewish man" or a "Hispanic man." I suspect you'd hear any outcry of protest from the black, Jewish and Hispanic communities. Yet women freely target "men" all the time in their rape lies, and it's not a hate crime, directed at a specific gender?

The woman may not have had malicious intent but many a false rape claim involving an allegation of some unnamed, unknown, phantom, indeterminate perpetrator has resulted in some innocent man or boy being targeted as a person of interest, and sometimes even convicted and sent to prison for years and years. Sometimes behind bars he becomes victim of the very crime of which he was falsely accused.

The emotional turmoil on a man or boy falsely suspected of rape -- facing possibly decades in prison for a crime he didn't commit -- is often worse than an actual rape itself.

Lives have been ruined on the basis of such lies.

So excuse me if I don't feel sorry for this poor mentally troubled woman. The politically incorrect crime of false rape reports, a crime of which no one wants to speak, won't stop until the liars are punished for putting innocent men at risk.

HARRISONBURG - The former president of the Grottoes Rescue Squad, who claimed she was attacked and raped outside the rescue squad building on Augusta Avenue last month, pleaded guilty on Friday to filing a false police report.

Kimberly Dawn Pendleton, 37, of Grottoes, pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge in Rockingham County General District Court. Judge John A. Paul sentenced Pendleton to a suspended 30-day jail term and required her to write a public letter of retraction.

At the time of the incident, Pendleton was president of the rescue squad and was an active member, according to the squad's Web site.

Pendleton's attorney, Bill Helsley, said his client is going through a rough time, adding that her entire life has been dedicated to helping others.

"Good people sometimes have difficult times," Helsley said.

The Case

On June 2, prosecutors said, the Grottoes Police Department responded to a call at the rescue squad and found Pendleton lying in the grass behind an ambulance.

When rescuers got there, police said, she appeared to be unconscious, according to prosecutors. They said she told officers she had been attacked from behind and raped. She did not name anyone specifically as her alleged attacker.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Louis Nagy said one of the things that made police suspicious of the claim of rape was Pendleton's refusal to undergo a full rape kit at the hospital.

Only a partial rape examination was performed, Nagy said.

Pendleton's behavior led police to investigate the incident further and, during subsequent interviews, she retracted the claim. Pendleton was charged on June 19 with filing a false police report.

Pendleton could not be reached for comment and calls to Grottoes Police Chief John Painter were not returned.

Calls to multiple rescue squad officials also were not returned and it's unclear if Pendleton is still with the rescue squad.

Nagy: Fake Claims Worry Public

Nagy said rape allegations involving a stranger can cause the public to worry about their safety.

"The report of something that violent has a tendency to make people nervous," said Nagy. "It's certainly something we take very seriously. Any time someone accuses another person of something violent, it has lasting effects."

He said the rape investigation also took police off other cases they could have been working on.

Three of the town's five sworn officers were subpoenaed to testify in the case.

"It takes away police manpower from real potential crimes," said Nagy. "They could be focusing on crimes that might actually be going on."

Nagy said Pendleton never named an attacker.

"Luckily she didn't name any names," said Nagy. "The stigma [of being falsely accused of rape] can be insurmountable to recover from."

In the letter of retraction, addressed to current rescue squad President Alisa Randolph, Pendleton said the rape claim was false and asked for forgiveness.

"I am making this statement to you as president and hope you will accept my apology for any embarrassment I may have caused you or Grottoes Rescue Squad," the letter states.

The story below illustrates a sad reality for innocent men accused of rape: even if the complainant does not press charges, and even if the men vehemently deny the allegations, and even if there is not one scrap of evidence to substantiate the alleged rape, the reputations of the accused men can be blackened, possibly forever, because their names are made public. The claimant is, of course, protected with lifelong anonymity. The men will never have a chance to prove that she lied.

Exactly why were the names of the supposedly-presumed-innocent young men made public in this instance, Judge Jeff Blackett? Do you not understand that the prejudicial effect to the young men of an unsubstantiated rape claim far outweighs the disciplinary value attendant to disclosing their names?

And, readers, please don't miss the most important point to this story: the claim is a wholly unsubstantiated, naked allegation by a lone teenager. Yet, because of the rape culture invented by the radical feminist sexual assault lobby -- where false claims are widely considered to be a "myth" -- this young woman has the power to possibly destroy the good names of two rugby players.

With nothing more than an allegation that she refuses to pursue.

She is able to use the media -- perhaps unwittingly in this case -- as her tool to assassinate their characters. The very whiff of an allegation will become "fact" in the minds of most casual readers because of the way the story is reported (poorly -- but judge for yourself -- it is set forth below) -- the teenager's claim is exalted as the most prominent aspect of this story.

To hell with presumed innocence and the effect a vile rape charge will have on a young man's name. All that matters is a sensational accusation. Most casual readers will glance at the story and assume "something must have happened," and the men will forever be considered "rapists" by some people.

What a shameful culture this is. It is hoped that faithful readers of this blog have a greater sense of healthy skepticism.

London, July 11 : A far more stringent code of conduct will be imposed on England rugby union players after a judge announced that he had fined two squad members who were at the centre of rape allegations on last month's tour to New Zealand.

Judge Jeff Blackett, the Rugby Football Union's disciplinary officer, made public the names of four players involved in the incident at an Auckland hotel in which two admitted that they had sexual relations with an 18-year-old woman, who went on to claim to police that she had been raped.

However, Blackett ruled that, in the absence of any testimony from the complainant, he accepted that Mike Brown and Topsy Ojo had "consensual relations" with the woman at different times in the same hotel room. Two other players, David Strettle and Danny Care, were exonerated over the incident, which tarnished the tour and the image of English rugby, The Times reported.

The 18-year-old had claimed she had been "sexually violated" in a hotel by four England players. Topsy Ojo, Mike Brown and Danny Care denied any wrongdoing.

The report, by the RFU's disciplinary officer Jeff Blackett, also reports for the first time that the alleged victim made an allegation of sexual misconduct both to police and doctors at a hospital where she sought treatment.

The report said that the alleged victim "stands by" the allegation, but has decided not to make a formal complaint because "she does not want to go through the criminal process".

Because no formal complaint has been made, the four players - who vehemently deny the allegations - were not arrested and were allowed to fly home at the end of the tour.

Blackett stressed in his report that there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by any of the players.

But he fined and reprimanded Ojo and Brown for misconduct arising out of their late-night drinking, whilst clearing Care of any wrongdoing.

He said David Strettle, who was wrongly named by the Sun newspaper as one of the four accused men, was also in the clear.

Brown and Ojo both claimed to have had a "consensual relationship" with the teenager, the report said.Although Blackett said the players had only committed minor disciplinary breaches, his report contains highly damaging details of exactly what went on, and will be seen as a new low point for English rugby.

THE former principal of the Concordia College high school in Windhoek, Ben Awoseb, on Friday won the more than three-year-long battle he had been fighting against charges that he had abducted and raped a 17-year-old student at his school in March 2005.

With the verdict in his trial given, Awoseb left the Windhoek Regional Court with only a N$1 000 fine or nine-month prison term, which he received after he was found guilty on a charge of attempting to defeat or obstruct the course of justice, as the official remnants of the three charges he had been facing before Magistrate Sarel Jacobs.

Awoseb (48) was acquitted on the two most serious charges that he faced, which were counts of rape and abduction.

He was accused of abducting a 17-year-old student at Concordia College, where he was the headmaster at the time, from the school premises on the evening of March 17 2005.

It was alleged that Awoseb drove with the girl in his car to the Ausspannplatz area in Windhoek.

There he then parked the vehicle and proceeded to kiss the girl, grope her breasts and sexually assault her, it was charged further.

After that alleged incident, Awoseb took the girl to a shop where he bought her food, and then took her back to the school premises, where she was living in a hostel, it was also alleged.

Awoseb denied all these allegations.

In his judgement, Magistrate Jacobs noted that when she initially told a friend about the events alleged to have taken place in Awoseb's car, she reported that he had kissed her and touched her breasts and private parts.

When she made a report to the deputy principal of Concordia College the next day, she claimed Awoseb had kissed her and touched her breasts, the Magistrate further recounted the evidence before him.

It was only after the girl had received psychological therapy that she also said that Awoseb had carried out a sexual assault on her that would constitute rape in terms of the Combating of Rape Act, Magistrate Jacobs noted.

The court had no doubt that if the girl wanted to tell people what had happened to her, she would have done so without leaving out certain details, the Magistrate remarked.

He said he could find no reason why she would have left out certain parts of her accusations against Awoseb.

To say that this happened because it was difficult to talk about a sexual assault is unconvincing, the Magistrate added.

He said the reports the girl had made at different times could not be regarded as consistent.

The girl also claimed that when Awoseb brought her back to the school premises, a hostel matron saw her being dropped off by him.

According to the matron, though, Awoseb was alone at his car when she saw him that evening.She told the court that she saw the girl nearby, but did not see her carrying any food, the Magistrate further recounted some of the testimony he heard.

Considering the evidence as a whole, the court was not convinced that Awoseb had removed the girl from the school premises or that an act of rape had occurred thereafter, Magistrate Jacobs said.

The situation on the third charge - a count of attempting to defeat or obstruct the course of justice - was different, though.

Awoseb admitted that after he learned that the girl had laid a charge against him, which led to him being arrested on April 12 2005, he phoned her and asked her to withdraw the charge against him.

He considered this to be a false charge, orchestrated by other teachers at Concordia College who were not happy with the way he was trying to enforce better discipline at the school, Awoseb claimed.

The court had no doubt that when he phoned the girl and asked her to withdraw the charge, Awoseb's intention was to bring the pending judicial proceedings against him to an end, Magistrate Jacobs said in his judgement.

That constituted an attempt to defeat or obstruct the course of justice, he ruled.

The news story below sets forth a garden-variety rape claim by a young woman as well as the garden-variety claim of a young man that the sex was consensual.

The D.A. is dropping the charges, but the young man is still painted in the story as someone "suspected of raping a woman" (read the first sentence -- is that good journalism? Is it fair? I think not), despite the evidence that the claim was motivated by revenge.

Of course you don't read about the possible revenge motive until near the end of the story. It is not given nearly as much prominence as the fact that the young man is someone "suspected of raping a woman."

And once again, ladies and gentlemen, a young man is JAILED on the basis of nothing more than a young woman's uncorroborated claim. This, despite his obvious denials that she's the real criminal because she filed a false report.

Get it? Two conflicting claims of criminality, but only one arrest is made. Bet you can guess his gender.

Two conflicting claims of criminality, but only one of them is tainted as a man "suspected of raping a woman" while the other is shielded in lifelong anonymity.

Any woman, any girl, can destroy any man, any teenage boy, using the police and the media, on the basis of nothing more than a lie without any corroboration.

And that tells you everything you need to know that there is something terribly wrong with the system.

A woman whose false rape allegation led to the collapse of her victim's marriage was jailed for four months yesterday after a judge branded her 'wicked'.

Tracey Winfield, 21, claimed she had been held down in a park by her former boyfriend Richard Peacock while his friend Dean Frasier raped her.

As a result of her claim - delivered in a detailed, seven-page statement - both men were arrested and held in police cells for 17-and-a-half hours.

The pair, who were both totally innocent, were forced to undergo medical examinations and give intimate samples before being released on bail.

Their ordeals ended only when Winfield walked into a police station in Grantham, Lincolnshire five days later to confess the incident never took place.

Mr Frasier was left so distraught by the allegation he contemplated suicide, Lincoln Crown Court heard.

Jailing her yesterday, Recorder Christopher Donnellan said Winfield's lies had damaged the chances of securing convictions in genuine rape cases.

Prosecutor Simon Rowe said Winfield initially phoned officers to claim she was attacked in Wymondham Park, close to the centre of Grantham.

They were arrested in the early hours of the morning and interviewed twice before eventually being released.

Mr Rowe said both men suffered as a result of the lie, adding: 'Mr Frasier, in particular, has spoken of the devastating effect the allegation has had.

'He contemplated committing suicide because of the nature of the complaint she made, and it was the last straw in his relationship with his wife.

'There was a report in his local newspaper, which meant that he could not even walk down the street without people suggesting he did it.

'Such was his concern that he spent money on taking a polygraph test to try to prove his innocence. He says Miss Winfield has ruined his life.'

Mr Rowe said Winfield and Mr Peacock had a troubled three-year relationship, resulting in her making 14 allegations to police about him.

Most of her claims were not taken further, though Mr Peacock was twice convicted of public order offences in 2006 as a result of her allegations.

Winfield, from Grantham, admitted a charge of doing an act intending to pervert the course of justice in April this year.

Gordon Aspden, defending, told the court she had been drinking when she made the allegation and now realised it was a 'monumental error of judgment'.

Winfield sobbed in the dock as Recorder Donnellan told her: 'What you did was wicked. It was not a spur-of-the-moment action that you did not go through with.

'Mr Frasier had his life ruined. Whatever relationship he had with his wife may have been able to be saved, but what you did made sure it was not.'

The case came just weeks after the Association of Chief Police Officers called for the introduction of specialist squads to investigate rapes in every UK force in a bid to drive up conviction rates.

Currently less than six per cent of reported rapes result in a conviction in England and Wales - and just 15 per cent of victims are said to report incidents in the first place, according to the British Crime Survey.

Recorder Donnellan suggested false allegations such as Winfield's served only to spread even more doubt among jurors trying genuine cases.

He said: 'When people have to consider another person saying 'I have been raped'... a report of a false allegation can put a doubt in their mind.'

Earlier this month, a Royal Navy Wren was also convicted of making a false rape claim against a former lover.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard that communications officer Erin Casson, 27, met Petty Officer Brian Eaton for a sex session three months after they broke up, but then told another man she had been raped.

A jury took less than an hour to find Casson, of Porchester, Hampshire, guilty of perverting the course of justice. She faces jail when she is sentenced next month.

And another man's life is ruined on the basis of an accusation of which he was cleared.

A man need not be sentenced to prison to have his life destroyed by a rape claim. This man lost his job stemming from the allegation.

If you were the employer, would you want him in your ambulance, with the "doubts" about him raised by a rape allegation? I hope the answer is "yes," but I suspect most people would want him to just go away. How terribly sad that a woman or girl can ruin a man's life on the basis of an allegation.

A PARAMEDIC cleared of sexually assaulting a drug-affected patient is shattered that Melbourne's ambulance service won't reinstate him.

Simon Howe, 32, was found not guilty of digital rape and indecent assault by the County Court this week and now wants his job back.

But the Metropolitan Ambulance Service yesterday claimed he was sacked for breaching his employment contract by not filling out an incident report. They said working for the MAS again was not an option.

Mr Howe yesterday said he had proved his innocence in court and was now being put through the added trauma of an unfair dismissal case.

"I'm devastated, shattered, my life has been turned upside down," Mr Howe said yesterday."As far as MAS is concerned I was guilty. I have had to pay for the right to prove my innocence and I still have to pay today."

Mr Howe said stricter security measures such as cameras were needed in ambulances to protect paramedics against false allegations or violence.

He said he had held his head high since the complaint, cleared his name and now wanted to get back to work helping people.

"Unfortunately there are more and more reasons for paramedics not to stay on the job," he said.

"Ambulance paramedics are already cautious about which patients they take and have refused to take patients."

The Ambulance Employees union yesterday condemned the MAS for their refusal to reinstate Mr Howe and said he was being victimised and unfairly treated.

They said a second paramedic in the ambulance at the time had not filled out an incident report either but was never disciplined or sacked.

"It's appalling -- the court has found him to be innocent, yet MAS are still treating him like he is a criminal," Ambulance Employees Australia state secretary Steve McGhie said. "They should accept the jury's decision and reinstate him immediately."

Mr Howe was sacked by the MAS in February last year after a 22-year-old drug-affected patient claimed she was assaulted as she was being rushed to hospital at 6.19am on November 5, 2006.

The MAS decided that Mr Howe failed to provide an adequate explanation of the allegations, failed to inform them what had occurred with the patient and did not lodge a report.

A court heard that traces of the drugs ice and GHB were found in the woman's system.

It was told Mr Howe was restraining the female patient because she was behaving erratically. It also heard her memory was scrambled by the drugs.

A MAS spokesman yesterday said they could not comment on the matter further as it was before the courts.

Monday, July 28, 2008

In my legal practice, I take the approach that if the other side likes me I'm not doing my job. So I am happy that two radical feminist sites unfairly maligned me last week -- site number one and site number two. I previously responded to the "criticisms" here and here because they allowed me to expose some critical fallacies. I don't engage these people in "debate" because they are not interested in rational discourse; they have a political agenda to pursue and will twist and pound every fact to fit within it. On Sunday, however, Fidelbogen at The Counter-Feminist wrote how some of his comments were not being posted to one or the other of the hate sites, so I checked it out and saw a flurry of activity in the comments section. (I am breaking my own rule about not citing to hate sites because Fidelbogen has convinced me to do so.)

I noticed a comment on hate site number two by the actual author of the posts, named Marcella Chester, who may be, to use Fidelbogen's terminology, a false rape apologist. Her comment provides another opportunity for a teaching moment. It also says much about her reliability as an objective observer of rape issues.

I do not chronicle the many errors in Ms. Chester's diatribe against me but this one merits your attention because it underscores a host of double-standards that could hurt innocent men falsely accused of rape:

Ms. Chester's Comment:

One interesting side effect of making the false reporting of rape a felony would be that this would cause more of these cases to go to trial. And at this trial the alleged rapist loses all the protections which come from being the defendant. The alleged rapist could be required to testify under oath and could face the same type of treatment currently given to those who report rape.

There are some rape cases which are widely considered false allegations where this sort of trial would be fascinating because of who could be required to testify. With the protections reversed all sorts of questions would finally be answered. Every technique and approach which courts allow to be used against rape victims could be directed at this alleged victim. Of course rather than seeing the situation from rape victims’ perspective, this would be marketed by those who demand this change in law as another way the system hates men.

Let us briefly explore Ms. Chester's erroneous comment that the man in a false rape claims trial could face the same type of treatment currently given to those who report rape. Let's deal with this in two parts:

I. Double Standards in the rape trial: The Rape Shield Laws protect rape accusers, not the defendant; and Fed.R.Evid. 413 imposes draconian rules on rape defendants that don't apply to any other defendant charged with any other crime

First, it is well to look at the rape trial itself because we need to clear up the erroneous premise that underlies Ms. Chester's comment that the rape accuser is somehow ill-treated in a rape trial. In fact, it is the accused, not the accuser, who is treated unfairly:

In a rape trial the woman would be fully protected by the rape shield laws that preclude any questioning or the admission of evidence regarding the woman's prior sexual history with persons other than the defendant (and in some instances, even including evidence of relations with the defendant himself). Some states bar evidence showing that she made prior false rape claims. Some states preclude evidence that the accuser used the same modus operandi to seduce other men.

In short, because of the reforms of women's groups that led to the enactment of rape shield laws, in a rape trial, the accuser is presented to the jury as a virginal specimen who, she claims, was defiled by a man who forced her to have intercourse with her against her will.

But wait, we're not done with the rape trial.

While the defendant need not testify at a rape trial, in federal court at least, women's groups have insured that special rules apply to him that don't apply to any other defendant in any other criminal case. Women's groups made sure that his sexual background is exposed for the jury to see in a manner that dispenses with the silly evidentiary protections applicable to all other defendants -- including murderers; including the theives who loot corporate pension plans and force thousands of employees to lose their retirement savings; including people who bash in the faces of convenience store clerks. Men accused of sexual assault are treated to evidentiary rules much harsher than any of them.

Pay attention to this: It is a basic tenet of our criminal law that jurors are not to be informed of any prior criminal record of the defendant. The reasons for this are obvious -- the trial will focus on the prior bad acts and the jury will convict the man for past misconduct as opposed to the charges at issue.

But a rape trial in federal court is different; there have been "reforms." Federal Rule of Evidence 413 provides that "in a criminal case in which the defendant is accused of an offense of sexual assault, evidence of the defendant's commission of another offense or offenses of sexual assault is admissible, and may be considered for its bearing on any matter to which it is relevant." The jury is to be informed of the defendant's prior acts whether or not the defendant takes the stand. Did you hear that? So, no, he need not testify, but his name can nonetheless be blackened for something that occurred years ago.

Moreover, and this is worse: Federal Rule 413 was not restricted to prior criminal convictions or even arrests of the defendant. Even an accusation of a prior sexual offense would be admissible.

Furthermore, the burden on the prosecutor to prove to the court that the prior offense occurred is not the traditional beyond a reasonable doubt standard, but only proof by a preponderance of the evidence. And finally, if those other rules don't work to destroy an innocent man, this one could: there is no time limit as to required proximity of the prior bad acts to the charged criminal conduct upon which the trial is based.For no other defendant are similar rules applicable. Once this evidence is admitted, it is nearly impossible for a man -- who may be innocent of both the charge at issue and the previous accusation allowed to be introduced under Rule 413 -- to plant a reasonable doubt in jurors' minds. Jurors will desire to convict the defendant for being a bad man, even when the current charges against the defendant can't actually be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And even when the charges connected to the prior accusation can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

And the fact that there is no time limit as to required proximity of the prior bad acts to the charged criminal conduct upon which the trial is based could result in fatal unfairness for the innocent man. A 50-year-old man who is a minister with four children and a happy marriage might be accused of "raping" an acquaintance when he was 18-years-old, when they were both drunk. The prosecution might even have the supposedly "defiled" woman testify. As previously explained here, charging an innocent man with acquaintance rape years after the fact is grossly unfair to him because it leaves him at a severe evidentiary disadvantage. After having sat on the evidence for years, at trial, the woman might paint a vivid picture of a rape; in contrast, if the man is innocent, the most he may be able to honestly say is, "I would never rape a woman, but I have no strong recollection of that night." In fact, he probably would have no recollection whatsoever of where he was on the night in question -- whether he was with her or not; whether he was drinking; whether she was drinking; where they were prior to or after the sexual encounter; what they discussed prior to or after; or with whom they spoke prior to or after. In short, he may recall nothing whatsoever about that night, and at trial he would be like the warrior of old entering battle stripped of his shield and sword. Allowing admission of this evidence in a trial of a different rape charge long after the fact is beyond unfair, it is a gross abuse of the legal system.

The rape shield laws made certain that the prior sexual conduct of the victim will have no impact on the present rape trial. But as to the defendant, a double-standard was born. Evidence of his alleged prior bad conduct is admitted. It is "pay back" time -- time to exact vengeance on the patriarchy, and if some innocent man gets convicted, he was just necessary collateral damage. Rape case defendants are afforded fewer rights than defendants in any other trial -- including Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, and presumably even Osama bin Laden, if he were captured and tried in Federal Court. The accuser is protected, the accused is not. All in an effort to jack up convictions and appease women's groups.

Can anyone assert with a straight face that innocent men are not at risk because of these "reforms"?

And can anyone accept Ms. Chester's underlying premise that rape accusers are somehow mistreated in a rape trial?

II. The trial of a false rape claim

Now let's look at the trial of a false report of rape to see if "every technique and approach which courts allow to be used against rape victims could be directed at this alleged victim."

You decide.

First, making a false rape report is hardly ever charged. When it is charged, and when a conviction results, the sentences are laughable.

Second, in a trial over a false claim, the male would not enjoy any of the rape shield protections his false accuser enjoyed when he was on trial for rape. His entire sexual history might be fair game if it is relevant. How many prior sex partners have you had, sir? Have you ever given a date something to drink before initiating sex? Have you ever had sex with more than one woman at the same time? Has a woman ever accused you of taking advantage of her? Weren't you cheating on your girlfriend with another woman?

On and on it goes. Some elderly jurors -- elderly women, especially -- might be wholly shocked to hear the extent of a college boy's sexual activities. Those same same elderly female jurors might be even more shocked to hear of the equivalent sexual activities of college women (you know, unfair double standards and all that), but those jurors will never hear that evidence in a rape trial where the accuser is presented as clean as the new fallen snow.

Would it be proper to do away with the rape shield laws? Absolutely not. But rape accusers are in a unique position in that they are afforded sensitivity not shown to any other accuser. Men who are accused of rape are often tainted for life. My concern here, again, is with the innocent men, the ones falsely accused. Is that a concern that ought to be taken lightly? I think not.

So is Ms. Chester correct that "every technique and approach which courts allow to be used against rape victims could be directed at this alleged victim" in the trial of a false rape claim?

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The news story below from India is a garden variety false rape claim except note the breathtaking inanity in this quotation: "In its ruling, the apex court said it was a 'settled position in law' that so far as sexual offences were concerned, 'sanctity is attached' to a victim’s statement."

The story itself proves the error in that "settled position." The woman lied. The "settled position" is absurd, preposterous, an affront to common sense and fairness. It insults innocent men falsely accused. Why would no other subject matter warrant such a finding of "sanctity"? Why wouldn't the man's denials warrant a similar presumption of "sanctity"?

Fortunately, our American jurisprudence does not attach such magical qualities to a woman's sworn assertion that she was raped. And for good reason. For rape, the FBI reports a false reporting rate fourfold greater than for other crimes. B. Dank, The Politics of Sexuality (Sexuality and Culture), Vol. 3 at 36, n. 8 (2000).

As we've said before, people of both genders lie about everything under the sun for all manner of reasons, good, bad and indifferent -- except, according to some radical feminists, when it comes to rape. In that singular instance, mirabile dictu, one gender essentially is incapable of telling a lie while the other is comprised of pathological liars. The very discussion of rape becomes a sort of truth serum for women, a magic elixir that forces anyone not possessing a Y-chromosome to utter incontrovertible fact. (And note this is true only for claims of rape, not recantations of rape claims, according to the radical feminists.) Is this in any sense plausible to a fair-minded person?

Women lie more about rape than other crimes because the crime is so easy to lie about. The very physical act that constitutes the alleged crime is precisely the same act that has been performed countless times every minute of every day of every year since the beginning of time the world over -- as an act of love, an act of procreation. To transmogrify this most fundamental human act into rape, all a woman needs to do is recharacterize it as nonconsensual. That's it. Most women would never do that (just as most men would never rape), but some women risk the potential hardships of falsely crying rape (just as some men risk the far more serious potential hardships of raping). The remarkable thing is that there are not many more false claims, given the ease with which they are made.

In short, sworn testimony of rape is like any other testimony that must be considered on its own merits, in the context of all the surrounding circumstances, including the man's denials. Period. And the ease with which a false claim can be made should be taken into consideration.

New Delhi, July 12: Lying about rape has boomeranged on a girl for taking the law for a ride.

The Supreme Court has refused to grant relief to the girl, who was jailed for three months by a Madhya Pradesh court for falsely accusing two men of raping her.

Mahila Vinod Kumar had filed an FIR in January 1993, saying the two had waylaid and raped her. She said she told her father and uncle about the assault and then lodged the first information report.

The accused were arrested and chargesheeted but, during the trial, the girl went back on her statement and claimed she hadn’t been raped. She even denied filing the FIR.

The trial court acquitted the two men on November 28, 2001, but ordered action against the girl for giving false evidence.

She was showcaused and a case was registered against her. The girl defended herself saying she was illiterate and had made a mistake. But the trial court sentenced her to three months in jail.

She then moved the high court and again took the stand that she was illiterate, didn’t understand law and that the particulars of the offence had not been explained to her.

The high court went through the case records and found that in her reply to the show-cause notice she had admitted that she had lied all through.

The court also found untenable her stand that the particulars of the offence were not explained to her, and dismissed her appeal.

The girl then appealed in the apex court.

Her counsel said her mother and uncle forced her to file a false report, although the FIR and the statement recorded by police clearly said she had been raped.

In its ruling, the apex court said it was a “settled position in law” that so far as sexual offences were concerned, “sanctity is attached” to a victim’s statement.

“This court has, in several cases, held that the evidence of the prosecutrix alone is sufficient for the purpose of conviction if it is found to be reliable, cogent and credible.”

But in the “present case”, on the basis of the allegations made by the petitioner, two persons were arrested and had to face “trial and suffered the ignominy” of being involved in a serious offence like rape.

“Their acquittal may, to a certain extent, have washed away the stigma, but that is not enough,” the court said.

The court said the “evil of perjury” had assumed alarming proportions and action must be taken against the girl for maliciously setting the law in motion.

But during a preliminary hearing Thursday in Ironton Municipal Court, the charges against him were dismissed.“The victim recanted her story and later told police she made up the allegations,” Assistant Lawrence County Prosecutor Mack Anderson explained.

The woman victim initially told police she was raped in the restroom of a business.

Anderson said he will now pursue charges against her, either obstruction of justice or falsification, since her false claims not only smeared an innocent man’s name and wasted countless police hours that could have been used to investigate truthful cries for help.

McClaskey’s attorney, Warren Morford, said his client is glad to have his name cleared.

“When he went to court the first time, they called his name and he stood up and when they started listing off the charges, rape, gross sexual imposition, assault, aggravated menacing, when they got past ‘rape’ the daggers came out of people’s eyes and you could see everyone wanted to kill this man over something this woman now says didn’t happen,” Morford said.

Neither Anderson nor Morford knew why the woman made up the allegations against McClaskey.

Yesterday, I responded to a hate post about me on a radical feminist site. Fidelbogen at The Counter-Feminist responded as well. I don't link to hate sites, but sometimes I use their inanity to make a point. (If I started "arguing" with people not interested in rational discourse, that is all I would be doing, trust me.) A comment posted under the hate post about me provides an opportunity for a valuable teaching moment. The comment includes the following:

"The system as a whole presumes a suspect innocent, and that is as it should be. But the *investigators* can start out with the belief that a rape report is true without harming this principle."

Second, investigators should start off by automatically believing the rape accuser -- in other words, being a cheerleader, an advocate for the accuser -- because, let me guess, um, women don't lie about rape and men accused of rape do? The commentator would do well to read my Web site before making that hateful assumption. That is hard-core misandry.

If a woman presents corroborating evidence, then obviously a police officer will understand that a case against the accused is stronger. But the vast majority of rape claims are of the acquaintance/date-rape variety and hinge on the issue of whether there was consent, not whether the physical sex act occurred.

Here is why a police officer must never toss his objectivity to the winds and automatically become a cheerleader, an advocate for a rape accuser. A man or a boy can be accused and arrested for allegedly committing the most vile crime short of murder on the basis of nothing more than the naked, unsubstantiated allegation of a woman or a girl. Legion are the cases where men and boys have been jailed, their lives turned upside down -- sometimes forever, on no more evidence that that. He can claim his accuser is the real criminal for making a false report (and in many cases it turns out she is), but she will not be charged, at least not at that point, and probably never.

The commentator is missing the most obvious point: the very physical act that constitutes the alleged crime is precisely the same act that has been performed countless times every minute of every day of every year, since the beginning of time, the world over. And in the vast majority of those literally innumerable cases, the woman welcomes the act. It is not a criminal act, it is an act of love.

But all she need do is recharacterize that same act as nonconsensual to claim rape.

And the commentator thinks that's enough, even if the male vehemently denies that the act was nonconsensual, for the police to become her advocate, her cheerleader? That's enough to toss objectivity to the winds? That's enough to assume the man or boy is a felon who should be locked away for decades?

And exactly who is looking out for the rights of innocent men and boys? Or are they collateral damage in your war on rape? What if the man or boy swears in the most believable fashion that the act was consensual -- who will be his advocate, his cheerleader?

Nobody, according to that commentator.

And how in the name of hell will there ever be a proper police investigation without objectivity?

I now realize that this is all too inane to even be discussing. The commentator might have fit in well in Salem at the time of the witch hunts, where an allegation was deemed sufficient to destroy another human being. Read my Web site, you'll see modern-day reenactments of that very thing, but the victims are exclusively male.

In the news story printed below, published today, a woman's lie nearly put a man in jail for many years, yet she will serve no jail time. None.

How is that punishment proportional to the crime?

Only when women are punished properly for trying to destroy innocent men with rape lies will other women be deterred. That is scarcely a revelation -- it is one of the fundamental precepts of criminal sentencing.

The woman's motive for lying is the one most frequently cited for false rape claims: to cover up an illicit sexual relationship from a husband, boyfriend or parent.

The viciousness of this sort of lie is most sobering: as so many others have done, Zoe Turner was willing to sacrifice her lover's life to salvage her own relationship with her boyfriend.

A woman who made a false rape allegation after being caught by her boyfriend in a hotel bedroom with another man has been given a suspended prison sentence.

Zoe Turner met the man she accused of raping her in a Bristol club and ended up sleeping with him in his hotel bed.

A recorder at Bristol Crown Court heard that nothing sexual took place between the two but when the woman's furious boyfriend found them she told police she had been raped.

The 33-year-old mother-of-five, of Nags Head Hill, St George, retracted the allegation two days after and later admitted a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

She was given a four-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work in the community.

Simon Goodman, prosecuting at Bristol Crown Court, said Turner met the complainant, who cannot be identified on the direction of the recorder, at the Chicago Rock Cafe in Bristol on November 19 last year.

The two met again the following night and Turner ended up staying the night in the man's hotel room.

The court heard how Turner's boyfriend came in the next morning and there was a row.

Mr Goodman said the defendant made a false rape allegation to police later that morning.

But on November 22, after being asked to make a filmed police interview, Turner withdrew her allegation.

Mr Goodman said: “A lot of police time was spent on the investigation. Although he was not arrested, he was at risk of it.

“She retracted within two days of the complaint. The reason she didn't go through with the video is because she didn't want it to go too far.”

Robin Shellard, for Turner, said his client pleaded guilty in March this year despite knowing she risked being jailed. He said she realised what she did was “very, very, wrong”.

Recorder Mr Llewelyn Sellick told Turner that he had to pass a prison sentence.

“What you did is falsely accuse a man who had done you no harm at all of a very serious sexual offence,” he said.

“There was a comparatively long period when the man was at risk of being arrested. You told lie, after lie, after lie.

“In December you were still telling lies, saying something must have happened.

“You actually went to a hotel with the man. When you were confronted with that you admitted what you had done.

“There has to be a prison sentence. I'm able to suspend that,” he said.

We previously blogged about the case reported below here and here, but one other aspect of it deserves to be underscored.

To illustrate, imagine the following scenario.

A man comes home from work and greets his wife:

WIFE: Hi, honey. How was your day?HUSBAND: Oh, same old thing. I went out to lunch with a couple of customers at the new Italian place downtown. It was great, I have to take you there. And then this afternoon, some cops stopped by and had me go down for questioning about a rape, and they took a DNA sample.WIFE: Oh, that's interesting.HUSBAND: Not really. Took longer than I hoped. But I'm starved now. Want to go for some Chinese?

Doesn't ring true? Of course not. That's because a man who is questioned about a rape he didn't commit likely would be in a state of terror. His loved ones, too.

Yet, the emphasis in the story below is on the fact that the false rape claim wasted police time. And, oh, as an after-thought, the story mentions the fact that the police targeted a man as a "person of interest."

Oh, yeah, heh, heh, almost forgot to mention him! If any crime almost exclusively affected women the way false rape claims affect men, do you think for a moment that the victims would be so cavalierly dismissed? No, and that's as it should be. (And by the way, rape itself may actually affect men more than women because of prison rape.) Why, then, are innocent men treated as collateral damage in the war on rape? Why are innocent men wrongly targeted as suspects treated as -- you know -- "just one of those things?"

The reason is because it is politically incorrect to speak the truth about rape and false rape claims. The truth is this: A rape claim should never be deemed inherently believable based on nothing more than the fact it was made. Likewise, a false rape claim should never be cited as a reason to doubt another rape claim. Each rape claim must be looked at objectively upon its own merits. If a rape occurred, the rapist needs to be severely punished. If the rape claim was false, the false claimant needs to be severely punished.

Does that make sense? To any fair-minded, thinking person it does. How did that sort of perfectly sensible logic become politically incorrect?

A Molalla woman's false rape report subjected one man to unwarranted scrutiny as "a person of interest" and wasted public resources during a weeklong manhunt for a perpetrator who didn't exist, police said.

Officer Scott Douglas, a Molalla Police Department spokesman, said Joresa Diondra Jefferson, 18, of Molalla will be cited for initiating a false police report after she returns from visiting relatives in California. The charge is a Class C misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine.

Jefferson told police she was walking home from a party about 1:30 a.m. June 21 when she was attacked and raped on a Molalla sidewalk. She worked with a police sketch artist to create a likeness of her attacker.

The apparently random nature of the attack had everyone in town on edge, police said.Medical tests turned up no physical evidence of an attack.

"Then, when we confronted her with it, she recanted," Douglas said.

"We put a lot of time into that case," he added. "With a small department like ours, we had to take a patrol officer off the street to investigate. It costs the taxpayers a lot of money when we get these false reports.

"We got tips from detectives and parole officers from across the area," Douglas said. "And then, we had to investigate each and every tip."

One man identified as a "person of interest" in the case submitted to questioning and provided a DNA sample.

Douglas said police believe Jefferson had been drinking at the party and later lied to her friends about her sexual activities. "It just snowballed from there," he said.

Molalla police also handled a false rape report last summer. That one involved a woman who later acknowledged that a sexual encounter with a man she knew had been consensual.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

This Web site does not link to hate sites. An apparently radical feminist took issue with a comment I posted on her Web site and devoted an entire post to attacking me and my position. I discuss it briefly because it illustrates some gross misconceptions about our Web site.

First, she accuses me of having a preconceived bias and a political agenda because, she asserts -- and you may need to squint hard and read this twice: "Unspoken but clear from his comment is that rapists are assumed innocent . . . ."

I am, of course, confused by her terminology. If she means convicted rapists, no, I don't assume they are innocent. They are guilty.

If she means men accused of rape -- do I assume they are innocent until their guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, just as every court in the United States does for every person accused of every crime listed in every criminal code of every state? Just as I would assume the innocence of the author of the hate post about me if she were accused of theft or prostitution or anything else?

The question scarcely survives its statement.

You can call it my left wing-right wing political agenda -- I insist that persons accused of crimes be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Like the ACLU does. You know, Coffin v. United States and all that nonsense that emanates from the silly old Constitution.

Should police investigating a claim of rape treat accused men as if they were guilty, or should they objectively try to discover the truth? Should they berate women who made the accusation and assume it's a lie, or should they objectively try to discover the truth? How is this in any sense controversial? It is not. In the real world, among rational people, that is.

Second, the writer also beats the radical feminist tom-tom and suggests that anyone concerned about false rape claims must be a rape "denialist." No comment is necessary to underscore the breathtaking naiveté of this assertion, or the misandry at work here. Sadly, it is de rigueur for radical feminism.

Accusing me of being a rape "denialist" merely because I believe it is appropriate to inject the verboten subject of false claims into the public discourse about rape suggests that the writer thinks we should be morally precluded from talking about false claims other than to declare them a "myth." This position, of course, denigrates the victimization of countless innocent men falsely accused of rape -- many of whom, incidentally, read this blog because they write to me, at times with gut wrenching accounts. Their stories are not being told in many places. In contrast, there are innumerable Web sites that focus on the suffering of rape victims, and no one here would ever question the suffering or victimization of women who have been raped.

By the same token, I know of cases where men falsely accused of rape have killed themselves, were beaten by other men, spent decades wallowing in prison for a crime they didn't commit, were raped while serving time for a rape they didn't commit, lost their jobs and were suspended from school, among many other atrocities. Most have experienced psychological torture that is almost unimaginable. This is because the very whiff of an accusation of rape can be as bad as anything that can happen to an innocent man. He faces the prospect of years and possibly decades behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, where there is often a good chance he will fall victim to the crime of which he was falsely accused; moreover, his reputation, his good name, all that he's worked for -- his business even -- are often destroyed by a lie. Even when the charges are dropped, many people still suspect that "something" must have happened.

It is most unfortunate that the person who made the disparaging comments about me is incapable of recognizing that, like true rape victims, men who truly are innocent of rape claims are victims, too. Even though innumerable women suffer as rape victims; even though many women are afraid to come forward to report rapes because of the social stigma; even though bad men too often get away with rape unpunished. None of that changes the fact that the falsely accused are victims, too. It is astounding to me that people feel a need to deny that indisputable fact. As if by acknowledging that, you will hurt the cause of raising awareness about rape.

Reading between the lines of her statement, I suspect she doesn't think false claims are an especially important problem. I hope I am wrong. But many in the sexual assault counseling industry contend that false claims are a "myth," a "bugaboo" or the product of misogynists' imaginations. That simply is not true, and denigrating the experience of the falsely accused by dismissing their victimization as a myth is not merely dishonest but morally grotesque.

In "Until Proven Innocent," the widely praised (praised even by the New York Times, which the book skewers) and painstaking study of the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case, Stuart Taylor and Professor K.C. Johnson explain that the exact number of false claims is elusive but "[t]he standard assertion by feminists that only 2 percent of rape claims are false, which traces to Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book "Against Our Will," is without empirical foundation and belied by a wealth of empirical data. These data suggest that at least 9 percent and probably closer to half of all rape claims are false . . . ." (Page 374.) I find the authors' refusal to be pinned down to an exact number refreshingly honest (as opposed to almost everything else I've seen on the subject) -- whatever the exact number, it's real, and it's significant.

I don't really care if the haters believe this but our goal in this blog is not to denigrate rape victims or to deny that far too many rapes occur or to insist that false claims dominate the public discourse about rape at the expense of dismissing prejudices true rape victims still face. Our goal is simply to insist that false claims be fairly included in the public discourse about rape.Given the level of animosity directed our way, I suspect we are doing our job.

The radical feminist sexual assault fringe group is constantly beating the drum about the low rate of convictions for "rapes" (and they premise their stats on the conclusion that every claim of rape is actually a rape, which destroys their entire theory). This beating of the drum is especially true in "enlightened" Britain (pardon my sarcasm). I wonder what is the conviction rate for false reporting of rape? I promise you it is far lower than the conviction rate for rape or for any other serious crime.

Classic quote: "Look to your left, look to your right, look in front of you, and look behind you. Statistics tell us you have just laid eyes on someone guilty of sexual assault." Catharine MacKinnon, 1990 commencement speech at Yale Law School. I am surprised she didn't specifically use the word "male."

The radical feminists claim that women don't lie about rape -- except when they recant a rape claim, of course (recantations are "often" lies, they assert). But to illustrate the inanity and the misandry at work with this philosophy, one also needs to examine the obvious corollary: Men accused of rape who claim the woman made a false report invariably lie, and men accused of rape who confess to it invariably are telling the truth. So any time someone speaks in a manner intended to send a male to prison for rape, that is the truth. Any time someone speaks in a manner intended to keep a male out of prison for an alleged rape, that is a lie. This Web site is devoted to debunking these feminist mantras, which are grounded on a political agenda, not facts. It is well to note that innumerable serious studies -- not feminist diatribes parsing some "government" statistic while ignoring others that don't support their view -- have shown that many men who have confessed to rape are actually innocent. DNA proves the "confessions" were false beyond any reasonable doubt.

Despite all the work that is yet to be done, it is well to pause every so often and remember the progress being made: in a variety of ways, wrongful convictions are being taken very seriously in many jurisdictions due to the work of the Innocence Project and similar groups. Wrongly convicted men are statutorily compensated in many jurisdictions, and their stories are being told in the media. Now if we can only keep a lot more innocent men from being arrested in the first instance . . . .

Classic quote: "Perhaps the wrong of rape has proved so difficult to define because the unquestionable starting point has been that rape is defined as distinct from intercourse, while for women it is difficult to distinguish the two under conditions of male dominance." Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989). If this quotation is accurate, and without knowing any more about her, one must wonder how an institution such as Yale, with a robust male and heterosexual female alumni, allowed such monstrous person to be a commencement speaker.

"These guys, like so many rapists -- and I'm going to say it because, at this point, she's entitled to the respect that she is a crime victim." Wendy Murphy, referring to the Duke lacrosse defendants on CNN's Nancy Grace show, hours after the April 10, 2006 release DNA evidence indicating the lacrosse players' innocence. Ms. Murphy is forever tainted by this act of prejudgment and misandry. And she's an authority on rape? Puh-lease!

Is there another crime on the books aside from false reporting of rape where the motives of the criminals are deemed so important by scholars and the news media? In fact, motive is not an element of the crime. Do they care -- even a little bit -- about the motives of accused rapists? I think not.

". . . women who file what are deemed to be false reports are rarely prosecuted -- the justice system does not want to compound the anxiety of actual victims." Cry Rape, Bill Lueders 31 (2007). Come again? When we're talking "false reports," the actual victims are males wrongly targeted as suspects, wrongly arrested, wrongly convicted. How dare you ignore the "actual victims" of this "actual crime" of false reporting! And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have this particular blog.

The radical feminist sexual assault lobby attacks the definitive study on false rape claims, by Prof. Eugene Kanin (who otherwise is a feminist icon), because the police force he studied over the course of nine years used polygraphs.

Heaven forbid.

Prof. Kanin's study revealed 41% of the rape claimants in this study actually recanted. It is fair to say that the level of false claims was actually higher -- Kanin only classified "false" claims as those who recanted. It is reasonable to assume other false claimants did not recant.

The feminists say the study is of no value because of the polygraphs. You see, these rape claimants for some unfathomable reason recanted because of the polygraph -- for reasons that makes no sense outside of the fairyland of the radical feminist sexual assault milieu. (But remember, as we've discussed elsewhere, to the radical femininsts, women don't lie about rape -- except when they recant. You get the picture.)

The fact of the matter is that polygraphs are routinely used by law enforcement officials, of course. But they are an important tool in one particular area of the criminal justice system -- insuring that sex offenders (who, incidentally, are predominantly male) are adhering to the terms of their probation. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, has upheld the use of polygraphs for this purpose, saying that polygraph testing "produces an incentive to tell the truth, and thereby advances the sentencing goals."

You see where this is going, I am sure: When polygraphs are used as a sword against men accused of sexual offenses, they are a useful, indeed necessary tool. When they are used as a shield to protect innocent men against false rape accusers, they are a tool of the devil.

I do not hear any feminists decrying the use of polygraphs to send men back to jail.I only hear feminists decrying the use of polygraphs when it will keep men accused of rape out of jail. And at least some of those men include the innocent, the falsely accused.

So, once again, to hell with the innocent men and boys. All that matters to these angry fanatics is nabbing the guilty, and the rest are just unfortunate collateral damage. And the fanatics are able to live with themselves by convincing themselves that false claims are a "myth," a "bugaboo," the product of misogynists' evil imaginations.

And hence the reason for this Web site -- to combat these wicked, wicked people who tell these terrible, awful lies. Because these lies are helping to send innocent men and boys to prison.

The following news account, below, falls into that category. According to Prof. Kanin: "Although this device seems to be the most extravagant use for which a false rape charge is made, it is also the most socially harmless in that no one was identified as the rapist. Approximately 18% (n = 8) of the false charges [in his study] clearly served this function. The entire verbalization of the charge is, by and large, a fabrication without base."

While this kind of false claim is the most socially harmless of false rape claims, it is still potentially harmful to innocent men because (1) it helps perpetuate the inane, indeed immoral hysteria that rape is rampant, that every woman is at risk of being raped, and every man or teenage boy is a potential rapist; and (2) it often leads to an innocent male being targeted as a person of interest or even being arrested. Men and boys have killed themselves and have been killed or beaten by others on the basis of nothing more than a false rape claim. This is not even to mention to emotional strain to them.

So, while the following type of rape lie usually isn't as dangerous as the case of a woman seeking revenge or the case of a woman who falsely accuses a man or boy to cover up an illicit sexual relationship, it has its own evils and is not to be tolerated.

Note that the story below is more concerned about the help this woman supposedly needs as opposed to the harms listed above. That sort of journalistic approach is typical of these cases, given that false rape claims have been wrongly subsumed in the radical feminist sexual assault metanarrative where they are viewed through a gynocentric lens instead of through the lens of the exclusive victims of this crime -- innocent males. For unfathomable reasons, false rape claims are not deemed to be gender specific hate crimes. Men and boys who are falsely accused are deemed to be nothing more than a sort of unfortunate, or not so unfortunate, collateral damage in the much grander war on rape (a war fueled in part by the hysteria generated by false rape claims), and false rape claims are branded as an aberration -- a "myth," a "bugaboo," the product of some misogynist's wild imagination.

A MOTHER who claimed a masked man brutally raped and slashed her has gone on trial for wasting police time.

Police say mother of two Jaime Lamb cost Cheshire Constabulary £30,000 in wasted man-hours by fabricating the attack at her home in Esthers Way, Weaverham, in July last year.

Lamb, 26, maintains a man forced her to have sex as her children slept upstairs before slicing her face, stomach and legs with a knife.

But prosecutors say she staged the attack and inflicted the injuries on herself after being rejected by two men in one night.

Lamb, who was taking anti-depressant tablets at the time, told officers she went downstairs after being woken by the sound of her window being smashed at around 5.30am.

There was a knock at the door and thinking it was her ex-partner, who she had telephoned for help, she opened it, but was faced with a man wearing a cartoon mask.

Lamb said he chased her into the kitchen before pinning her down and subjecting her to a violent attack telling her: “Be a good girl, remember your babies are sleeping upstairs.”

Opening the three-day trial at Knutsford Crown Court on Monday, Martin McRobby, prosecuting, said forensic tests on the defendant’s dressing gown indicated she had broken the window herself and sound recordings from a neighbour’s CCTV revealed the glass was only smashed after she made the call to her former partner.

Medical professionals are also due to give evidence stating her injuries were consistent with self harm and not rape.

Mr McRobby said: “The case is totally false and ficticious. Her injuries were self inflicted, there is evidence that she broke the window herself and the audio tape does not support the defendant’s version of events.”

Lamb, who had been drinking, smoking cannabis and sniffing cocaine earlier that night, said she spent the evening with blind date Thomas Walsh before going to bed alone at around 2am, not waking until her window smashed.

But Mr McRobby said she texted Mr Walsh at 4.15am asking him to return. He refused.

She then texted former long-term partner Mark Taylor at 5am asking him to come over but he too refused, saying he had been drinking and could not drive. She then called him to say her window had been smashed.

Mr McRobby said: “She called Mr Taylor to say something had happened then caused it to happen herself.

“If the court finds that she did so, she has a number of personal issues that need to be addressed. It may have been a cry for help or something to do with being rejected by two men in one night.”

In the story below, imagine if you were the poor man who was falsely accused of rape. The police come to the door and grill you about your supposed crime. Your entire life rides on whether the women's lie has its intended effect -- which is to destroy your life.

This investigation turned out the way it was supposed to turn out. One of the women has been arrested for filing a false report; the other is being sought on the same charge.

Many such investigations don't turn out the way they're supposed to. And we know what often happens then.

On July 22, 2008, 26 old Crystal Lynn Morris of Mountain Home was arrested on felony charges for filing a false report, a Class D Felony, according to a release by the Baxter County Sheriff’s Department.

On June 19, 2008 Morris and another female came to the Sheriff’s Office claiming the both of them had been raped during the early morning hours by man at a house south of Mountain Home. Investigators with the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office and the Arkansas State Police conducted an investigation into the allegations.

A search warrant was conducted at the house and interviews were conducted by investigators with the complainants, the alleged offender and other witnesses in this case. The investigation concluded that the allegations of rape were false.

A warrant was issued for Morris for the Class D Felony offense and she was arrested at the Sheriff’s Office without incident.

Morris was taken to the Baxter County Detention Center where she is currently being held on a $5,000 bond.

An arrest warrant has also been issued for the second female, 25 year old Jennifer Rose Burnett. She is currently being sought by authorities on the same charge of Filing a False Report.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A young woman made an unsubstantiated allegation that she was "raped" by two men last May. In recent weeks, she refuses even to speak with police about it, much less cooperate in their investigation; the timeline of her original narrative, it turns out, does not match records of her cell phone usage; and no DNA evidence was discovered on her clothes.

After all that police think her original statement may lack authenticity.

You're damn right it may lack authenticity. It strains credulity to believe a rape occurred based on nothing more than a young woman's naked, unsubstantiated assertion in light of the other indicia of unreliability presented here.

Yet, police do not believe her claim was a hoax, either, according to a police officer named Brenda Slovak.

Come again? What more do you need, madam?

Slovak is quoted as saying only one percent of reported sexual assaults turn out to be false.

I would welcome you to provide objectively verifiable data showing that only one percent of the 67 rape reports to your police force since 1998 turned out to be false. Are you familiar with Professor Eugene Kanin's study? You would do well to consult it: http://www.sexcriminals.com/library/doc-1002-1.pdf

Your one percent figure is half of even the radical feminist assertion that only two percent of all claims are false, and that assertion has been thoroughly debunked.

You would do well to furnish better information to the press, madam, and writer Jay Board would do well to examine the authorities cited in this Web site as well, and not merely parrot someone who obviously accepts the veracity of any fanciful claim -- most likely because it is made by a woman and alleges rape against a male. Such insensitiviy denigrates countless innocent men who have been victimized by false rape claims. Spend a few hours and read the accounts in this Web site before you speak on the subject again.

Investigators doubt a local college student’s claim that she was raped by two unknown men at Bear Creek Park on May 30.

The alleged victim has not returned numerous messages left at her Keller home in recent weeks and "is not showing an interest anymore," Keller police Lt. Brenda Slovak said. A confidante also is hanging up on investigators’ phone calls.

"The lack of cooperation for the past three and a half weeks leads us to believe the victim’s original statement my lack authenticity," according to a police statement Wednesday. "Due to technology advances, the victim’s timeline to the assault is inconsistant with the information we obtained through records of cellular phone usage."

The investigation is ongoing.

"It’s a hard case to work when you don’t get any cooperation out of the victim," Slovak said. "The case has gone stale."

Sexual assault investigations are usually conducted quickly and lead to arrests, she said. But detectives are having trouble filling holes in the 18-year-old’s report.

The girl told police that two men approached her as she left her car in the parking lot in Bear Creek Park at about 11:50 p.m. May 30. The men followed her to a grassy area near the creek. There, she sat for about five minutes when one of the men pulled her down from behind and the other attacked her. After about 30 minutes, the men drove off in a small, white pickup.

She reported the alleged attack and described the men to police at about 4:30 p.m. the next day.

A sketch of one of the suspects was released June 4.

Neither suspect has been identified. A laboratory did not find DNA evidence on her clothes, Slovak said.

Slovak said investigators do not believe the girl’s report is a hoax. Less than 1 percent of reported sexual assaults turn out to be false, she said.

However, Slovak, a 20-year Keller officer, said she can’t recall a sexual assault in Keller in which the victim did not know the assailant. Since 1998, 67 rapes have been reported to Keller police.

In the story below, a woman blamed the eleven-year-old boy she victimized for her misconduct of repeatedly raping him.

Did you get that? The eleven-year-old is responsible.

How? You see, she was "a victim of his obsession with her."

Come again? He was eleven-years-old, madam! Eleven.

The lesson, as we've seen previously, is this: if you are a boy who is statutorily raped by an adult woman, be prepared to be accused of predatory sexual behavior, usually rape. Boys are often victimized twice -- by being statutorily raped, and by being falsely accused of somehow being responsible for the illicit intercourse. Remember this story?

ERIE, Pa. -- An Erie woman has been convicted of raping an 11-year-old boy.

Twenty-eight-year-old Carrie Dana was convicted today of felony counts of rape, indecent assault of a child younger than age 13, and a misdemeanor count of corruption of minors. She was acquitted of two felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.

Ms. Dana's defense attorney had claimed that she didn't repeatedly rape the boy but was instead a victim of his obsession with her. But prosecutors argued that Ms. Dana regularly had sex with the boy and stopped only when she thought others were becoming suspicious.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Another frightening news account of a woman who had no compunction about sending her ex-boyfriend away to prison, possibly for decades, for a rape he could not possibly have committed.

The cruelty of many false rape accusers, such as this woman, is bottomless.

In his landmark study of false rape claims, Professor Eugene Kanin singled out false claims motivated by revenge as the most dangerous kinds of false claims: "Because the suspect is always identified, the false allegations potentially pose the greatest danger for a miscarriage of justice."

This type of false rape claim merits the most severe penalty available to judges.

To suggest that the woman's mental state should furnish grounds for mitigating any sentence for this crime is to ignore that fact that no woman in her "right" mind would do something so malicious; that certainly is not the criteria for determining the severity of a punishment or else our jails would be empty. This woman and her ilk are threats to innocent men and boys and their loved ones, and they need to be punished severely. Severely. Not 30 days; not 60 days. Severely.

Note that despite the innocent man's alibi, the investigation took a month to conclude, and all the while the charges mercilessly hung over his head. In addition, the false accuser was able to go to court to obtain a protective order against him (essentially any woman can get a protective order just by lying).

This is another in a cavalcade of frightening examples of the fact that innocent men and teenage boys are at the mercy of any woman or girl who deigns to cry rape. Exaggeration, you say? There are too many true-life examples of that very thing, as chronicled on this Web site, to suggest that it's an exaggeration.

And kindly don't try to convince the regular readers of this blog that false claims are a rarity or a "myth." That is an outright lie. Sadly, it would be more accurate to call false claims an epidemic.

Police arrested a Pocono Pines woman after they say she admitted lying to investigators when she accused her ex-boyfriend of assault and rape.

Elissa Easterling, 27, is accused of lying to Pocono Mountain Regional Police by falsely accusing a man of beating and raping her.

After originally telling police and court officials that she was assaulted on two occasions and raped once by her ex-boyfriend, she later said she “has problems” and that she had not had any contact with the man in months.

During the course of a month-long investigation after she told police she had been assaulted, police corroborated the man’s alibi and determined that Easterling had fabricated her reports.

She also testified in order to get a protective order against the man, under oath at Monroe County Court, that she had been raped. The protective order was granted.

When police confronted her with the evidence that she was lying, police say she admitted to making up the assaults. Easterling said the man did not harm her in any way.

She was taken to Monroe County Correctional Facility where she will be charged with perjury and making false reports.